Not Quite A 'Victory' For Kotaku

Kotaku broke the news that they received an Assassin's Creed: Victory leak. Specifically the leak came in the form of a several minutes-long video, and despite the fact the timing of its release coincides with a significant drop in consumer confidence, the author of the article refuses to consider why someone at Ubisoft sent this to him in the first place.

He was sent it by Ubisoft and told to tell people it was a leak, this would then hopefully drive people away from all of Unity's problems and get people to focus on the next game. If confirmed then I bloody knew it.

"We've arrived at a level where people will lie and deceive within ALL media, even video game "journalism". " I agree.For example.I claim that I received an early copy of Watch Dogs 2 target footage and man it was awesome.WD2 reveal confirmed for 2015!!!

Advertising is like a starting pistol though, why start a good 4 months before you have to? I believe that Unity was leaked by Ubisoft last year but i think Victory was leaked without Ubisoft's consent, remember, there are about 20 studios working on Assassin's creed game at a time and Montreal alone has over 2,500 employees. imagine how many there are altogether who know about this game, could be upwards of 10,000 people.

This was leaked, properly leaked. The only people this pisses off are the people that are actually into Assassin's Creed "Unity still doesn't work but here's another game to make you worry about next year, enjoy!" Not possible, it would just put people off the series.

Unity is in a state that likely can't be fixed. The frame rates are sluggish, they couldn't accomplish much by patching the game (and even, allegedly, reducing some of the performance tad), and that pop-in is likely always going to be there.

Ubisoft have also distanced themselves from DLC. That whole 'we're doing the right thing by you, by giving you free DLC and canceling season passes' wasn't a move for US, it was a move for THEM. They probably saw the impact of lowered consumer confidence in those DLC sales, and they distanced themselves from pursuing much more of that in the future (for Unity). They cut their losses, and figured giving a free game to anyone who DID purchase the season pass will be less costly than actually spending more time and money on DLC development.

And, as already said, there's the consumer confidence issue: More, now than ever, I see people urging others to not pre-order a game and pick it up sight-unseen. Unfortunately, the industry heavily relies on those pre-orders... meaning Ubisoft can't have people already doubting the next installment at this stage.

So, they 'leaked' this. Likely as their way of saying, "If you're going to enjoy Unity, that's awesome because it's still a fine game... but look, next year we're releasing an AC game in a setting that fans have been hoping for. We're innovating gameplay some. There will be some amazing set-pieces, such as fighting atop a moving train. We're excited for this, we hope you are too... give us a chance." They pass the video along to Kotaku, knowing they'd report the video, but probably told Kotaku, "Don't actually show the video because the game isn't running quite as it should yet, and we dont' need another 'bullshot' shitstorm."

I mean, it's all speculation... but then again, I entertain at the end of the article that this could, in fact, be speculation. I doubt it, though... the timing is WAY to coincidental. It really does seem like they're responding to the 'dont' buy next year's AC game' crowd directly.

Yes, it is definitely coincidental but i can't see it myself. The game will be fixed and it will be fixed before Victory releases, BF4 was completed and Hardline was delayed. I think it will be the same situation, they could delay Victory until next year and leaked it to the public in order to get some feedback, to see what they can squeeze in or what they can change. But for me, the timing is just off, if they were going to do that, they would have done it in March, not a month after Unity when no one knows if it will be playable or not.

Frame rate might be fixed but I doubt they're going to be able to fix the horrendous pop-in. Not game breaking by any stretch, but it's certainly going a long way to break immersion. And if they fix it... well, it'll probably be after most people who are going to play Unity actually finish it.